MAYPORT, Fla. \u2014 The Mayport community is coming together to help feed and provide free supplies to military members and their families, amid uncertainty surrounding the ongoing government shutdown. <\/p>\n
Cars encompassed the parking lot at the Mayport Navy League\u2019s latest Military Monday food drive.<\/p>\n
This time, 200 meals were ready to be distributed, along with 10,000 diapers and baby wipes.<\/p>\n
But ever since the government shutdown, these drives have been seeing traffic increase, with more and more military families facing uncertainty.<\/p>\n
Iris MacFarland\u2019s husband is currently deployed, and even though he was able to secure a loan through his bank to try and fill the gaps during the shutdown, there\u2019s a lot of concern should the government not reopen soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to not get stressed because it\u2019s a lot already to be raising a baby and having him far from here. So, we don\u2019t want to over-stress ourselves, but it is a lot,\u201d MacFarland said.<\/p>\n
Barbara Ives is Vice President of the Mayport Navy League and said that since these drives started in January, she\u2019s never seen a greater need.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, our military Mondays are only one Monday a month, but we had one last Monday, and we have another one today, and you can see the need. I mean, there is an incredible need for food,\u201d Ives said.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he would repurpose the research and development fund to ensure military families don\u2019t miss a paycheck this week, but there are still unanswered questions.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n The National Military Family Association put out a release<\/a> questioning whether the plan will include National Guard members, and whether checks will still come in on Wednesday, given that many federal workers who deal with payroll have been furloughed.<\/p>\n For MacFarland, she said she\u2019s seeking all the help she can to ensure she and her baby are prepared in a worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it feels a little bit hard when you\u2019re like kind of proud and don\u2019t want to do those kind of things, but you gotta do what you\u2019ve got to do,\u201d MacFarland said.<\/p>\n There are resources available, like no-interest loans for military members and other government employees, to help them get through this tough time. <\/p>\n For example, USAA announced it distributed more than $144 million in loans over a 48-hour period last week alone.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MAYPORT, Fla. \u2014 The Mayport community is coming together to help feed and provide free supplies to military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,975,972,974,969,116,118,117,971,970,634,968,973,980,979,978,977,628,981,976],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-barbara_ives","tag-food_and_diaper_drive","tag-iris_mcfarland","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake","tag-jake_stoan","tag-local","tag-mayport","tag-mayport_navy_league","tag-mcfarland","tag-national_guard","tag-national_military_family_association","tag-president_donald_trump","tag-us","tag-usaa","tag-vice_president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}