To sustain is an action verb

There is at least one characteristic that windmills have in common with all other machines: they do nothing unless they are turned on.

Likewise, to sustain is an action verb. It goes beyond the action of simply raising our hand to the square. Two Church leaders explain further. Elder Loren C. Dunn of the Seventy [4] explained: “When we sustain officers, we are given the opportunity of sustaining those whom the Lord has already called by revelation …. The Lord, then, gives us the opportunity to sustain the action of a divine calling and in effect express ourselves if for any reason we may feel otherwise. To sustain is to make the action binding on ourselves to support those people whom we have sustained. When a person goes through the sacred act of raising his arm to the square, he should remember, with soberness, that which he has done and commence to act in harmony with his sustaining vote both in public and in private” (Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual, page 54).

John Taylor, the third President of the Church, taught: “What is meant by sustaining a person? … For instance, if a man be a teacher, and I vote that I will sustain him in his position, when he visits me in an official capacity I will welcome him and treat him with consideration, kindness and respect and if I need counsel I will ask it at his hand, and I will do everything I can to sustain him. That would be proper and a principle of righteousness, and I would not say anything derogatory to his character” (Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual, page 42).

Is it sufficient alone to raise our hand in sustaining support? Can windmills alone keep the water out of Holland’s polders and low-lying areas? No, they can’t. As I mentioned earlier, dikes are an essential part of that infrastructure. But even dikes and polders working together are, at times, insufficient to protect the Dutch and their land from floodwater.

On Saturday, 31 January, and Sunday, 1 February 1953, The Netherlands experienced the worst flooding in its modern history. A storm combined with an unusually high tide caused the North Sea to inundate the country. The sea rushed over the dikes, flooding over 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometers) of land, including 9% of Dutch farmland. The floodwater damaged 47,300 buildings, completely destroying 10,000 of them. An estimated 30,000 animals drowned, and 700,000 people were evacuated from their homes. A total of 1,836 victims died, including a baby who was born that night who drowned in the floodwaters.

This disaster led The Netherlands to undertake the Delta Works, a project to help protect the country and its polders and low-lying areas from the North Sea to prevent such an event from ever happening again. It was expensive, costing billions of Dutch guilders, and it took a long time to complete: from the North Sea flood of 1953, the Delta Works were largely completed in 1997, though the very last portion of them—a retaining wall near the city of Harlingen—was completed on 24 August 2010. These barriers are viewed the world over as a model for protecting similarly low-lying areas from flooding—including parts of New Orleans that were severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as I began my studies in Holland.

It took additional action for the Dutch to protect their homes and their country, and it takes additional action from each of us to move beyond simply going through the motion of raising our hand to the square to truly sustaining the Lord’s chosen servants. It took additional action for the Dutch to protect their homes and their country. Raising our right hands to the square in a sustaining vote is a sacred act, but more is required of each of us to really express its deeper meaning through our actions.

Sustaining the prophets prepares us for the future

The Delta Works have also helped position The Netherlands to face the future challenges of climate change and rising sea levels. In our lives, our sustaining the prophets and other Church leaders will equip and prepare us for the future.

One of the things that Presidents of the Church and other Church leaders have persistently counseled us to do to prepare for the future is to live within our means, pay off debt, and set money aside in savings. Susan and I have tried to follow this counsel throughout our marriage. Early on in our marriage, we set a goal of how much we wanted to have set aside in savings after three years. We were pretty well on our way to reaching that goal when in April 2010 I had a feeling that we should shift where we put our extra money each month. Rather than setting it aside in savings, I felt we should use it to pay off our student loans as quickly as possible. When I mentioned that to Susan, she said she had the same feeling. So that’s what we did.

We finished paying off all our students loans later that year, with a payment of $4,363.10 on 15 December 2010.

Within two weeks’ time, some events happened at my job that led to my submitting my resignation on 27 December 2010. Mathematically it should have been impossible for us to live off of Susan’s pay without digging into our savings. But we were able to. We even took a weeklong trip to the Deep South and Chicago for spring break 2011—all without having to rely on our savings. We knew that the Lord was taking care of us, and we knew that we were being blessed because we had sustained the prophet and the other leaders of the Church and were striving to follow their counsel.

Sustaining the prophets helps us in other areas of our lives

Because much of it is low-lying and flat, The Netherlands doesn’t have a lot of water power, so harnessing wind power through windmills helped power industry and farming in Holland—corn and flour mills, sawmills, and others.

Likewise, sustaining Church leaders helps us in other areas of our lives:

• Fulfilling our own Church callings.
• Paying off debt and avoiding new debt.
• Obtaining as much education as possible.
• Taking care of our bodies, remaining in good health, and avoiding disease and sickness.
• Raising and supporting our families.