My name is Jonathon Demeere, and my first spiritual experience in the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple occurred on July 24th, 2016, during a special tour for investigators along with their missionaries.  I suppose a little back story on our situation would help progress my testimonies with more clarity. My wife and I had met online, through a game we both played that had a chat room that all players could communicate with each other, we began as friends, both of us going through rough times at the end of our prior relationships.  We found ourselves to be a good support system for each other, giving moral support and encouragement to strive for better situations in our lives, we began to become very close.  Eventually as time went on and we became more and more comfortable with one another, friendship grew into more, and I had flown out from Pennsylvania to California to meet her, and it was love at first sight.  Through the span of our courting we had both traveled to the others' home and eventually led to a marriage proposal at our future home in Minersville, PA, on Christmas Eve of 2015.  Both of us had our separate foundations of faith in the Lord Almighty, and we both did and still do believe that it was in God's will that we find each other.  We approached the matter of differing faiths quite logically at first, learning the basics of our faiths from the others' life stories.  I was not of the Latter Day Saints faith, i had my own thrown together mix of different Christian beliefs; bringing together practices that through my journey through life had been revealed to me as true. My amazing wife had been a member of the LDS Church her entire life.  In an effort to get to know and understand my better half more thoroughly i had begun to investigate the church after she had moved in with me.  Missionaries began to come to our house and answer my questions, shortly thereafter, a tragedy had struck.  I was in an accident at work, where I was driving my truck and another big truck had struck mine (I drive a triaxle dump truck for a living).  The accident had put me in a position where I was unable to work, and I was blessed to have walked away; even blessed to be still alive.  The missionaries came to visit me in the hospital on the day of the accident, July 22, 2016, and had given me a blessing for healing.  Two days after we were supposed to go to tour this wonderful Temple of the Lord, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to go, I prayed deeply every chance I had for the Lord's will to be done, that if I was meant to see it and to be there that I would be.  On the drive down to Philly, I found myself in immense pain through my entire body, praying to the Lord that if He wanted me to be there, and that if this Church was true, to give me a sign in the Temple.  When we began our tour, I had to be taken through the Temple in a wheelchair, every bump over the thresholds of the doorways sent shooting pains through me and the medicines the doctor had prescribed me were rendered useless.  As we were coming to the Celestial Room, I remember praying, pleading with God; "If you're going to show me anything Lord, now would be the time, in Your House, in Your Room."  The tour group had filed into the room and seated themselves for a moment of silent meditation, and I closed my eyes.  From the instant I had closed my eyes every pain in my body was lifted from me, the light that had shown through my closed eyelids had slowly grown brighter and brighter, and I could feel the peace of Christ all around me and within me.  He had answered my prayer, and when I had opened my eyes and the world had begun to rapidly return to the way it was; even so much that my pain had returned in it's fullness, I knew God wanted me to be in his Church and He was going to help me through my sufferings.  

     The missionaries had become a regular in our home, teaching us their lessons, even so often an occurrence was their presence that on days when they weren't over the house felt empty and missing something.  We fed them without regard to our own food issues and God had done for us what i call "fishes and loaving" our food; making it not only sustain us, but the missionaries as well, for a longer period of time than it would have even lasted us on our own.  On the day that we were taught the lesson on chastity, we had asked for a blessing over our home, and the presence of the Lord was felt strongly, and we didn't want it to ever leave, so that night we had moved my place of sleeping from our bedroom upstairs to the dining room downstairs where we could set up my daughter's bed, being that she has moved away with her mother and didn't use it anymore.  We did repent of our sins and transgressions and had practiced the law of chastity.  Shortly thereafter was the lesson on the law of tithing, and since then we have  both practiced that law as well and have been blessed for it. I was then a little lost as to the next step as to where our Heavenly Father wanted me to go, and I prayed for His counsel, I prayed that His will to me be known undoubtedly and undeniably as to what was to be next.  The next day, on the Sabbath, He had revealed to me His will.  After all three hours had been concluded, we were waiting to speak to our Branch President, President Murray, when a lady I had seen but never spoken to had walked up to us and spoke to me while my wonderful fiance was speaking with a different member, saying "I hear you two are engaged, do you have a date set?"  To which my response was "After this trial of hard times with my accident is over we are thinking about celebrating with our wedding."   Her response was simply "There is something about you two, Heavenly Father is with you; you two should be married right away." And she then walked quickly away.  Barely five minutes later another member had came up to us and during talking to us had said; "You know, it doesn't matter your financial situation for a wedding, we can marry you right here in this very Church, and we can throw a pretty good shindig together fairly quickly."  I remember thinking to myself well the first one was a little odd, now this one is quite the coincidence.  It was then our turn to speak with the president, and even in the beginning of our meeting he had remarked to us seemingly off topic and out of no where, "You know I can marry you two if it would be what you would want, and I wouldn't charge you for the service."  That was the undeniable sign, one can be odd, two a coincidence, but three, this had to be the answer I was praying for.  In the weeks following we found ourselves volunteering in the Temple and preparing for our wedding.  The first time volunteering on the drive to the temple I had dozed off for a little while and had a dream; in this dream I had seen the spire of the Temple with the Angel Moroni affixed on the top from the corner of the block across the street against a beautiful white cloud set in an awe inspiring blue sky with the sun just before the cloud, and as I had awoken I knew this was to be where I was going to be placed, and surely enough that is where I served the first 4 hours of that first shift we had volunteered as the crossing guard with an amazing view every time I was not busy with my task of "shepherding" the people across the street.  On the third and final time we volunteered, we were tour guides leading people through the temple together as a team.  We had gotten to take two groups through, and on our way back to see about a third we had passed by one of the senior missionaries we had came with and he exclaimed he had the last tour, we had asked if he minded if we joined the tour, to have one last tour ourselves of this truly amazing house of the Lord, to which he obliged.  

     After the tour had concluded we had went to the baptismal font area to get our cleaning assignments, which to our surprise had all been handed out.  We then asked if it would be alright if we could sit with each other in the Celestial Room, which we were granted.  It was an amazing thing, to be sitting there all alone with the woman who was to soon be my wife in the presence of God.  We sat in silent meditation holding each others' hand, and when I had opened my eyes I could scarcely believe what i saw; I had exclaimed to the beautiful lady by my side "The walls, they're shaking! Everything is shaking! Can you see it?" which she had expressed that she saw it too, and then the reality struck me and I had corrected myself; "Its not the room, it's like.... it's the air! The air is vibrating! And I can see it! The air is alive!"  And so it was that the air was in fact alive and the Lord was there with us and we could not only feel but actually see his presence around us, again I emphasize, we didn't see Him, but we saw His presence alive and all around us!  After a short time people had begun vacuuming just outside of the Celestial Room, and we had took that as our cue to vacate that amazing place.  We then were asked to police the Temple grounds for trash, and our final volunteer date ended with a romantic yet productive stroll all around the beautifully lit Temple at night and through the rooftop garden on the welcoming center.  A perfect end to a perfect day.

     Well it wouldn't be a proper ending to leave a suspense in our story, we were married at Pottsville Branch building of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Friday September 16th, 2016, at 4:00 pm, I was baptized the following day at 2:00 pm at the Kutztown Ward building, I had attended the Temple Dedication Ceremony 12:00 noonsession the following day with my new father in law at the Reading stake center, and was confirmed a member the following Sabbath during sacrament, and bestowed the Aaronic Priesthood the same day during the priesthood meeting.  We are continuing our lives in the Church happily.  And as a little icing on the cake, my youngest daughter was able to attend our wedding, my baptism and be with me that entire weekend, for the first time in a year and a half, I am also expecting to return to work any day now, knowing that God will continue to heal me until I am complete.  God truly is a loving God who blesses us beyond what we think we want but with what He knows we need.  I would like to set aside a moment of this testimony to thank our awesome elders; Elder Court Lake, Elder Braden Shumway, Senior Elders; Elder and Sister Black, Our Branch President, President Murray, my truly inspiring and amazing wife Mrs. Lori Demeere, and above all Our Heavenly Father for his abounding love and for the gift of His Son's atoning sacrifice that without we would be lost.  I leave this testimony with you in the name of our Heavenly Father's son, even Jesus Christ; Amen.

                                                                                                                                                                                       Faithfully, 

                                                                                                                                                                                            Brother Jonathon R. Demeere

(P.S. I still can't tell or type this story of ours without tearing up at the remembrance of how God had turned an almost tragedy into an inspiring and life changing experience of His love)