Church may honor missing hiker

While hundreds of Utahns searched in vain last week for 5-year-old Destiny Norton, another search was taking place in the rugged mountains of Idaho for a Utah youth minister who went missing the same weekend.

Neither search turned out as family and friends had prayed it would.

Jon Francis, 24, a youth minister at Ascension Lutheran Church in Ogden, went hiking in the Sawtooth Mountains near Ketchum, Idaho, on Saturday, July 15. He was working for the summer as a youth counselor at Luther Heights Bible Camp, some 40 miles from Ketchum, and had a day of personal time after a group of youths left the previous day and the next group was scheduled to arrive on Sunday.

An experienced hiker, Francis had previously scaled several nearby peaks and set out to climb one called Grand Mogul. He was scheduled to return to the camp around 6 p.m., but when he failed to return by early Sunday afternoon, the Custer County Sheriff's Office was contacted.

Officials believe Francis actually reached the summit of the peak — which is ranked as a highly technical climb — where he recorded the words "Glory to God" in a visitor log. They have yet to determine what happened to him after that entry. Searchers and family members scoured the rugged area on the ground and from the air for two days, but the search was called off on July 18.

Francis' family appealed to the governor of their home state, asking for help in persuading Idaho officials to resume the search. Meanwhile, about 20 members of Francis' congregation in Ogden traveled to Idaho to help the family look for him. The official search also resumed, but both the sheriff's office and the family agreed on July 23 to call it off.

Several prayer vigils were held during the search efforts both in Ogden and in Idaho, but at press time there was still no word on Francis' whereabouts.

On Wednesday, two men from his Ogden congregation continued to comb the area, according to Pastor David Kiel, who worked with Francis at the Ogden church. "He left notes in his climbing journal that his plan was to go up and down the east side of the mountain. They were trying to see whether he changed plans and went a different way.

"From what I hear the mountain is very technical and boulderish. If he fell, he could have easily fallen into the boulders or into a crevice. They could have been inches from him and not seen him, and if he was incapacitated, he couldn't yell back."