These verses give us two types of information. The latter section tells us some of the difficulties that were endured in this missionary effort. The first part tells us where the gospel was preached. This categorization of the locations fits with the general social distribution of peoples that the sons of Mosiah would have found in a typical Mesoamerican community.
Ammon notes that they taught in their houses. Mesoamerican cities had house units attached to the more public architecture of the central city, and of course there were houses in the more rural areas. Given the nature of this description, it is most probable that the house to house preaching occurred in the city where the houses would be closer together. Since the next comments are about the cities, it makes some sense to see this picture of house preaching in a city context. The also teach in the streets and temples and synagogues. These are again all city locations.
In addition to the city, however, they also preach to the more rural people outside of the city. This is indicated by the preaching “upon their hills. As with Jesus in Galilee, they would have had farmers gather to certain locations to hear the preaching.