Cultural: When Amulek warned the people of patience in their afflictions (Alma 34:40-41) he may have meant those that would inevitably come while they remained in Antionum. He may have also understood that their eventual expulsion was probable. What this verse tells us is that we must remember that the simple removal to Jershon did not completely end their afflictions. While they were among a people willing to accept them and to include them, they were still a people displaced. They had left their lands, and as landless farmers were in need of rather immediate assistance.
We are not told what the “ministering” was that Alma and his brethren performed for these immigrants, but it is highly likely that the majority of it was related to temporal concerns rather than spiritual. These people had to be relocated, had to find arable land and begin the process of clearing it for planting. In the meantime, the community of Jershon would be required to assist in the feeding of this people who could no longer feed themselves as their entire means of production had remained behind them in Antionum. There would have been much ministering.