Terry & Donna Clayton

It all happened so fast it was a surprise. We put fingers out in May to see if anyone would be interested in renting out our property in California. Donna's Mom still lives there, near Donna's sister, and she wasn't ready to move yet. So since we own the land as part of an inheritance for Donna her Mom has what is known as a "Life Estate." This is a legal filing that allows a person to live on the land even if we sold it to another family. The buyer would just have to allow her to live there until she passed away or was in a home away from the property for over four months. It is a nice way for older people to stay in their own homes.

So we put out feelers and found a young family with two boys, that we knew the family of the couple from our insurance business just added to it. They were living in a trailer with family until they could move in and wanted to move in before school started so we decided the end of July was the right time to move. We packed the truck after selling lots of stuff we wanted to not move and some things we really wanted to take but wouldn't fit and headed out across country for Raleigh, North Carolina. Six days later we arrived safe and sound, had about ten people there to help us unload into a rental house and our son Aaron showed up to surprise us.

When we first came to the Raleigh area in May we fell in love with the area. It was beautiful, the people are nice and the people at the churches here were so friendly as well. Donna starts teaching this Sunday and I'm scheduled to help in a class on Friday mornings after the first of the year. All teachers here work for nine weeks then they have off if they want. When we found one of the brethren was a contractor and found us a beautiful lot and so we took the plunge and bought a house to be ready in three months. Because of the county and putting the house back one hundred twenty feet it was finished on October 15th. My 59th birthday.