Sometimes a friendship can change far more than how you spend your afternoons.

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

For 12-year-old Andrew, a shared love of video games with his best friend Joc eventually helped lead him to something he had spent years without — a permanent family.

Andrew had been in foster care for almost half his life after his parents’ rights were terminated when he was six. His four siblings were adopted, but Andrew’s journey proved much more complicated.

At 10, he arrived at the Nashville, Tennessee home of Dominique and Kevin Gill, Joc’s parents.

Dominique recalled to TODAY: “Andrew has four siblings and they were all adopted right away. During his first week with us, he sat in his room with the door closed and looked at old pictures. He didn’t want to talk.”

Settling into another home wasn’t easy.

Dominique said Andrew would initially “scream and behave badly” as he tried to push the family away.

She recalled: “He’d start shouting, ‘Just let me move out!’ But I refused to give up on him. I was like, ‘We are going to get you together.'”

Gradually, things began to change.

One particularly important moment came when Joc asked Andrew whether he wanted to play video games. Andrew nodded — and the pair soon discovered just how much they shared.

“We had a lot of stuff in common,” Andrew said.

Joc summed up two of those interests simply: “Games, Minecraft.”

Dominique said they had been “best friends ever since”, with the bond between the boys becoming increasingly important.

Kevin said: “As the years went on, [Andrew and Joc] got pretty close. It’s good to see that bond they have grown over the years.”

The Gills had originally entered fostering without plans to adopt, hoping instead to help as many children as possible. But Andrew’s circumstances changed their thinking, particularly after a second attempted adoption did not work out.

Dominique explained: “Our mindset was we’d help him until he found his forever home. But after the second adoption didn’t work out, I realized God put Andrew in our lives for a reason. God made sure the adoption didn’t work out so he could come back to us.”

In May 2020, the family prepared a surprise.

Youth Villages counsellor Molly Parker took Andrew for a walk, where he discovered the Gills and family friends waiting with balloons and signs. Joc even wore a shirt asking: “Will you be my brother?”

Then came the question that changed everything: did Andrew want to become a permanent member of their family?

He burst into tears.

Dominique said: “From the beginning, Andrew has always said, ‘Thank you for accepting me,’ ‘Thank you for not giving up on me.'”

She added: “People would read his file and get scared away. But I knew he was a good child who had experienced a lot of trauma.”

The family also found that strangers sometimes noticed their different racial backgrounds.

“Because Andrew is white and we’re Black, people will stare at us. They’re confused,” Dominique said.

For Andrew, however, race had never been a condition when considering a foster family — he selected “no preference”.

Dominique put the family’s outlook into simple terms: “Love doesn’t have a color. (Andrew) is our son, just like Joc is our son. He’s a part of us.”

After years of uncertainty, Andrew hadn’t just found a best friend.

He’d found his brother — and his forever home.

Featured image credit: Dominique Gill / Instagram