I suspect there is no member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Pocatello who has more Catholic friends than I do.” That brought a round of confirming laughter from everyone at the end-of-year staff meeting of the local Holy Spirit Catholic school.

For the past school year, I worked part time as “Mr. Paul” at the Holy Spirit Catholic school as the kitchen aide and as an occasional substitute teacher. I saw and helped feed the students, including a couple of my granddaughters, from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade every day. Surely I was the lowest man on the staff totem pole and theologically an alien amongst the Catholics. I was a different kind of saint, that’s for sure!

So how’d that work out?

Well, I might have hoped the children would have been neater eaters. The cafeteria might have been too noisy from time to time. The kids threw away a lot of good food, too. Turns out Catholic school kids are just like public school kids at lunch time.

But those aren’t the memories I’ll hold on to. I had to pass on the morning assembly songs I did not know. Most of the set prayers were foreign to me as well, but I joined in whenever the Lord’s Prayer was recited.

We were all united during the daily Pledge of Allegiance.

On occasion that I was substitute teaching on the day of the week that all the school went to Catholic mass I went with my class to church. Of course the students all knew I wasn’t a Catholic, and they would help me out. “You don’t have to kneel,” whispered one middle school fellow as the bells rang and the congregation responded. I don’ t know if I was excused because I wasn’t Catholic or because I’m old, but the gesture was made in such a kindly way I’ll never forget it.

One time the scripture reading in Mass was the story of David and Goliath. The next week I loaned the religion teacher five smooth stones I once collected from the dry stream bed in the valley of Elah where David fought Goliath. These were the ones David did not put in his bag as he approached Goliath, but they do make the story come alive and put you in the scene. Nothing to compare to David’s sling, but loaning one of my treasures made a trust impact.

On Veteran’s Day I was asked to teach the middle school students. In my 1969 jungle fatigues and McNamara boots I gave them an age appropriate history lesson about the day and my experiences as a veteran. At least they learned where Vietnam was on a map. The kids shared their stories about veterans in their lives. I took care to describe my religious episodes in Vietnam related to the Book of Mormon as “scriptures” so as not to proselytize my Latter-day Saint theology. That was part of the employment contract and I was careful to abide by it.

Trust increased to the point that I was even substitute teaching in the religion class! OK, it was just the New Testament book of Acts, but still…. My coworkers in the Pocatello temple thought that was a hoot for Brother Entrikin to be that engaged in the activities of a Catholic school. But trust went both ways.

One of my LDS middle school granddaughters was regularly cast in the starring role as Mary or the Virgin of Guadalupe in the school’s religious plays and reenactments. It reached the point that it became a private family joke about her being recruited to join a nunnery. Humor aside, it showed the degree of acceptance and mutual trust that might surprise an outside observer.

It wasn’t that we just mutually chose to ignore our theological differences. I would tell the staff, including the principal, some really terrible Catholic puns and we’d all laugh at them. For example, “What do you call a priest who becomes an attorney? Father-in-law!” At times a teacher would ask me about the meaning of a religious picture hanging on the wall and I’d preface my reply as, “my understanding” of the picture’s meaning and significance.

As Christians, citizens and neighbors there was so much we shared that the differences faded away in the background. As a result I’m pretty sure my extended family and I do have more Catholic friends than most Latter-day Saints here in Pocatello. If you have any doubts about that, just ask my 4-year-old granddaughter about her class boyfriend. I’m told he’s not even afraid of dinosaurs.

Paul Entrikin is a resident of Pocatello. He grew up in Baton Rouge and has two degrees from Louisiana State University. Following a tour in Vietnam as an Army officer, he began his career in information technology. The last 35 years of his career were with ExxonMobil at a variety of foreign and domestic locations.