Scot provided the photography and Maurine the content for this article.
If you just watched this video, you can see that Scot and I look tired, hot and unkempt. We were dragging after a week camping out in hundred-degree-plus weather on a remote wadi in Oman. That’s because this was shot in the best candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful in a place so remote people still can only get there by fishing boat (or from the high desert hiking down through the rocks if you happen to have a Liahona. We didn’t.) But our message is clear: We need you to join with us in continuing this effort in Oman. Please keep reading or you can jump in and help right now.
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Now you might wonder how any spot on earth could possibly be a candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful? Nephi does us the favor of describing his Bountiful with very clear criteria in the Book of Mormon. We will talk about this in much greater detail later this week.
Bountiful has to have much fruit, be on the seashore where you could launch a boat, have a freshwater source, enough trees to make a boat, a source of ore to make tools, flint to make a fire, be directly East of Nahom and much more. It has, to, in fact, be worthy of the name Bountiful–and Arabia, in contrast, is all sunshine, heat, endless sand and bald, craggy mountains where vegetation cannot readily grow.
Arabia’s climate and geography, in fact, used to make the Book of Mormon’s eager critics hoot until 25 years ago Latter-day Saint, Warren Aston, searched up and down the coastline of the Arabian sea looking for a place that met Nephi’s criteria. He finally found one at Khor Kharfot, a surprising gem of a green forest on the seashore in the otherwise barren Oman. It met every criterion that Nephi describes and the only place on the coast of the Arabian Sea that does. That’s why we need your help now. Keep reading or consider a donation to this enormous effort now.
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What’s more it is a place full of archaeological remains. Long rows of stones. The remains of homes, larger buildings and retaining walls. Many graves. A large mound whose use is not immediately clear. An overhang that shelters ancient inscriptions. What does it say? When were these structures built? Who built them and when? Could any of them have been here when Nephi and his family came? What can we learn from the people who once lived here that sheds light on the story of Nephi and his family building a ship?
The archaeology, geology, ancient plant life and other context of this place begs to be studied. It is, after all, the most likely spot that we can pinpoint for Book of Mormon archaeology next to Nahom in Yemen. Would you like to join us and become a Book of Mormon Explorer?
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The Khor Kharfot Foundation was formed when we went with Warren Aston and a small group of people to visit the place in October 2013. Many were so intrigued that they wanted to invest in a research design and a team of archaeologists, botanists, and a geologist to come back and discover the meaning of what happened here. We wanted it to be the best, most scholarly research that could possibly be done. We were not looking specifically for Book of Mormon evidences, but for the context of the place and time to increase our understanding of Nephi’s great shipbuilding undertaking.
What’s more, we realized there was great urgency to begin this study now. Here’s why: The Middle East is becoming increasingly unstable. Though Oman is a beacon of peace in that tumultuous region, the border of Yemen, where al Qaeda is a dominating presence is only ten miles away from Khor Kharfot.
To make matters more immediate, Khor Kharfot itself is changing. As villages up above increase their water use, the wadi that feeds the beach and flows into the sea is desiccating, the greenery gradually fading. A road, though halted for now, has begun which would ultimately cross the fragile beach at this Bountiful location. You can see why we need your help now.
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The Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, who leads Oman, has been surrounded by advisors who are environmentally sensitive, which has protected this site so far, but, according to our sources, these advisors are not in the key positions they once were.Instead, Oman is feeling the wider regional pressure to develop businesses that are lucrative—like beach resorts.
Can you imagine the site that has been pristine all these years where Nephi very likely built his ship becoming a resort before we had time to protect it with research and documentation?
We couldn’t and so a small group of us formed The Khor Kharfot Foundation, an IRS approved 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, to do sophisticated, coordinated archaeological research and environmental research on the site.
In April 2014 we took in a team of three archaeologists and a geologist to the site for a week to map, measure, assess, work and film.
In October a team of botanists and two archaeologists will continue this work as part of an ongoing process to know what happened here. (Please keep reading on next page)
Here’s where we need your personal assistance.
To this point, these few people who make up the foundation have funded this project, but it is too large for us to do it on our own.We need your help. You can play a part in understanding this best candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful, exploring it, and perhaps weighing in on saving it.
In this next phase we will need between $18,000 and $23,000 to continue. With a lot of faithful Meridian readers, aka Book of Mormon Explorers, we will be able to accomplish a great deal.
To keep the costs lower, most of our October 2014 team are experts and trained individuals from Oman.Only three or four people will be coming from outside the Middle East.
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If you want a more in-depth understanding of how all this came about, please click here.
We need your donation to a worthy cause. You can be a Book of Mormon Explorer from the comfort of your armchair. Every dollar goes directly to onsite research. There are no administrative costs or middlemen. AND, every dollar is tax deductible (if you are from the United States or are under the Internal Revenue Service code). What you give goes to uncovering Bountiful’s great secrets.
This unknown script is drawn in a cave at Khor Khafot.
If you have only a few dollars to give, we need it. If you have more, we’d be very grateful. This archaeological process will be at least several months and
Please say YES and Donate HERE
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In the next few days we will be running a series of articles, photos and 21 different short video segments taken on site in April 2014. We will list them with hot links here:
Meridian Special: Research Team Explores Where Nephi Built the Ship on the Arabian Sea
