u/Galtrix525

I rarely post on Reddit, mostly I just comment, but I wanted to post and see if anybody else has had similar experiences. Forgive me if this is a long rant, but this has been pent up since I returned from my mission long ago.

For context, I served a mission in Berlin, Germany between the years 2013 - 2015. We had flip phones, talked to our families twice a year, and talked with people strictly about the Book of Mormon (we were told not to focus on the bible). This was also the time when the “I’m a Mormon” campaign was being pushed *super* hard… we even created our own profiles on an “I’m a Mormon” webpage. We spoke with people about Joseph Smith and the first vision, and focused heavily on getting people to feel the spirit. Our goal was simple - to preach the gospel and how it was restored to the earth. The church at this time was relatively familiar to me, as I had grown up in the religion since I was young.

Compare this to today, and the church feels entirely different. I was recently approached by missionaries who knocked on my door. I let them in, because I’m aware that missions can be difficult… unbearably so at times. They introduced themselves as missionaries from the “Church of Jesus Christ”, leaving off the other half of the name. I spoke with them for a good 20 minutes, and it felt like I was speaking with missionaries from a random Christian religion. They focused solely on Jesus Christ and my relationship with him. No mention of Joseph Smith, or even the Book of Mormon. Not even a mention of the Spirit.

After it was revealed that I was no longer participating in the LDS church, they focused even more heavily on how I feel about Jesus Christ, pulling scriptures from the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and that I could find peace and happiness through him. I let them know, kindly, that I was not interested in going back to church, and we parted ways amicably.

This got me thinking… what’s different about the church nowadays? I’ve ignored almost everything that has to do with the church up until recently, except for occasionally listening to Mormon Stories podcasts. I started looking into the things that have changed since I went on my mission, and the church just feels entirely different now. Is the church panicking due to loss of members? Is the church attempting to convert people to the religion before they realize what it actually is? It irks me that I dedicated two years of my life to teach people about Mormonism, just for the church to turn around and pretend they aren’t different from mainstream Christianity.

Anyways, rant over. Does anybody else have any experiences similar to mine, or opinions about the church changing a bunch of stuff? Mostly, I’m just curious what else the church has changed that I’m not aware of.

I have a dumb question that I probably already know the answer to - but I’m going to ask it anyway because I need some opinions.

My car is a manual 2016 Ford Fiesta. It recently started having significant issues traveling up hills… the car basically goes into limp mode and I have to pull over and restart the car just to make it up hills. Mechanics have no idea what’s wrong with the car, and I’ve taken it to about 9 different mechanics. The last straw was that I took it on a short trip (2 hour drive) and it failed to make it up a long hill twice. I still owe $7500 left on this vehicle.

This is approximately when I started looking at some used vehicles. I came across a 2021 Mazda 3 for $14,500. They are willing to purchase my vehicle for about $5,000, so that’ll eat up most of the negative equity, leaving $2,500.

My question, along with context is: Would it be smart to purchase this new vehicle, even with negative equity? I was taught to *never* purchase a new car and roll over negative equity. I could probably continue to drive this current vehicle until the wheels fall off - I would just have to avoid hills.