Nine months ago, the Christian family of Letcher County wasn't sure they would rebuild their store after it was destroyed in the July floods.

But community need convinced them otherwise.

Now, almost a year later, the Isom IGA is finally reopened for business and the Christian family says they hope the new building will offer people more than just groceries.

It is great to be at this moment.

It's been a long journey.

This is home to me.

I have been here for 50 years.

I worked 25 years for the previous owner and then 25 years for myself.

And it was a total shock when we came in on the 29th and was flooded and had to start making some quick decisions of what we were going to do.

All we were left with was a shell of a building.

We knew we had to start getting the mud out and start making it out.

At that point in time, we realized it was too toxic.

We had to look for a professional cleaning crew to come in with Hazmat suits and all that.

Once we got that, we had to make the decision of whether we wanted to rebuild our store.

And after about a week of hard prayer and crying and not knowing what to do, our family finally decided, yes, our community needed the store because the closest store to here is about 15 miles away.

We are located in a food desert.

So for the past nine months, some people from down at Cornets Ville and other places on down the road here having to travel to the upper end of the county, which is 40 minutes or 40 minutes back home.

A lot of our customer base is older, so it's hard for them to get out.

It just feels wonderful to be able to be back and do what we're used to doing.

There are some changes.

We want to make it a one stop shop, especially for everybody on the lower end of the county.

That had to go up to the upper end to get special things like kimchi or whether it's ice cream cakes.

We got a new frozen cooler, so we'll have ice creams all the time.

We're still in hunts where there's pizza now from opening to 8:00 at night.

We've had in the Smoker and the Daily, so we'll be able to offer smoked meats.

Now, we was never able to do that Saturday.

We considered it a soft opening.

There was nothing soft about it.

I kept saying, you know, guys, they've been gone for about nine months, so we're going to have to work to get our customers back and my employees get said.

We're not going to have to work.

They want to come back.

And they did.

The community really rallied behind us came Saturday and we officially started selling groceries on Saturday.

Although it's a great day for us, it's still a sad time for a lot of people struggling and not being able to get their homes built.

Getting ready to get the FEMA trailers taken away from them.

But we just hope this is an inspiration and a home that people can come to and just feel loved.

I also hope it gives everyone else the encouragement to say, hey, it can come back even though it's my house, or it may be my church, it may take a few months.

It's a lot of hard work, it's a lot of mud, it's a lot of smell.

But if we stay with it day by day, it will come back.

We will be able to bring it back.

No doubt about it.

SIMON Christian said Saturday's soft open was the highest grossing day in store history.

Good for them.