Welcome to the forum Esther and masha-allah for you and your openminded friend. I think Alpha dude said it best and that is don't be intimidated cause i have a friend from Estonia who's now a muslim but his passion for Islam was more like a weird infatuation because there were many things he didn't understand and he absorbed alot of misconceptions from the media but still he was interested and when he had the guts to join me and my brothers to the mosque, we entered and he ran loool because he felt intimidated looool now we use this funny incident to taunt him every once and a while