Apparently attempting to give free Bibles to relatives of nigger pirates can be a career-ending move.

They had a custom-made yacht called the Quest, and all the charts, satellite phones, and high-tech navigation expected of modern seafarers. Yet they were propelled by an even deeper spiritual zeal — the same one that had prompted Scott Adam, 70, to leave his work behind the cameras of Hollywood for the ministry 15 years earlier.

"We seek fertile ground for the Word and homes for our Bibles," the couple wrote on a website where, like in captain logs of old, they documented their voyages and their mission to spread Christianity through distribution of printed Bibles.

"All I can say is that Scott and I are living our dream delivering Bibles to remote corners of the world," Jean Adam, 66, told her first husband, Bill Savage, when he expressed worries about their trips in dangerous waters.

Scott Adam had spent his career as a filmmaker in Hollywood but gave that up in 1996, and enrolled as a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., where he earned a master's of divinity and did the coursework, but not the dissertation, for a Ph.D., said his friend, professor and counselor, Richard Peace. His wife, Jean, was a dentist who shared his love for the sea.

"In 1996, he had a kind of epiphany, the sense of God calling him into the ministry," Peace said of Scott Adam. "Two weeks after that, he was enrolled here."

Their sailing adventure was a result of Scott Adam's desire to meld his two callings, the sea and the Lord, Peace said. Scott Adam was an Episcopalian but worshiped at St. Monica's Catholic Church, where his wife was a member of the choir, when they were onshore.

It was a second marriage for both, and they were brought together by a love of the sea, Peace said.

"They loved the water. They loved traveling. They could combine their ministry with sailing, and they could assist churches in particularly remote locations" around the world, Peace said.

"We were so unhappy being 'dirt dwellers' during our time in the states," the couple wrote on their website.

The couple carried boxes of Bibles in different languages aboard their yacht. "Every time they left port, the boat was weighed down with Bibles," Savage said.

more at: Pirate killings of four Americans escalates crisis