Meet our Keynote Speakers

In addition to two Breakaway Sessions we also have two amazing keynote speakers for you.

Rachel Goode

I have many passions.  Among them are adoption advocacy, orphan care, studying and teaching the Bible, and eating sugary candies.  I especially hope to encourage women suffering through difficult waiting periods… especially women waiting to become mothers, whether because of infertility or long adoption processes.  Scripture shows that God’s people have always been a waiting people.  There is purpose behind the pain (James 1:2-4), and God makes beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3).  I am excited to share with you some of God's purposes in waiting.

Rachel lives in Alabama with her pastor husband and two beautiful girls, ages five (biological) and three (adopted from Uganda), and their brand new son Owen, born at the end of 2013.  She writes obsessively and teaches Bibles studies.  Find her blogging about faith, motherhood, adoption, Jesus, and racial harmony at www.heirswithchrist.com.

Jen + Brian Dean

Hi. We are the Deans. Brian and I (Jen) are high school sweet hearts, who married straight out of college. We had our whole life ahead of us, "the american dream." First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes... Well, we met the third part of this ideal with some serious obstacles.

Brian and I are the perfect storm of infertility. Two people completely incapable, medically speaking, to have biological children, who met, married, and were thrust into the muddy waters of infertility.

Join us as we share our beautifully broken journey through the heart wrenching battle of infertility. Before even marrying, God had placed adoption on our hearts, and it was through the catalyst of infertility that we understood that adoption was God's Plan A for our life. We now have a beautiful two year old daughter, named Eliana Faith, and are blessed by an open adoption with her birth mom. We are also "Paper Pregnant" with our next child through the miracle of adoption! "He makes everything beautiful in His time." Ecclesiastes 3:11

{Jen also blogs at Barren Made Beautiful.}