First letter from PA

On Monday morning I (along with 4 other elders in my 

district) got up and around 3am so that we could catch

our bus to take us to the airport, it really was 

terrible getting up that early because there's really

not that much recovery time to catch up on that sleep

because busses aren't that comfortable at all!! 

On the bus ride up there we took University pkwy to 

get to the freeway and I passed all the stores and 

restaurants that were on the way there and told my 

companion (Elder Coles) stories about all the different

places. It was kinda funny and was like, okay, I’m 

leaving this life behind and going on and serving the 

Lord. I got to see the church building one last time 

and the general area in which we lived it was cool! 

They (our MTC branch presidency) told us to back off 

on the "gung-ho"-ness of being missionaries at the 

airport, just because, well I think they didn't want us 

embarrassing our selves basically or something like 

that, I dunno. The flight was nice, once the tires 

of the plane left the ground I was out! It was pretty 

crazy how fast I fell asleep but getting up at 3 am 

will do that to you.

When we arrived in PA, the first thing I noticed was, 

there were no mountains!!!! It’s all hills and boring-ness! 

Well for now because all the trees are dead. Pres. 

Summerhays and the Assistants to the presidents 

picked us up and we took all our luggage and loaded 

it into a trailer and piled into the MAV (Mormon 

Assault Vehicle) and they took us to Golden Coral 

to eat dinner then proceeded to take us to the mission 

home where we met with the president(of the mission, 

not the US) and stayed the night.

The next day I met my new companion, Elder Zaleski! 

He is a fantastic missionary and he's teaching me 

a lot! We were assigned to the Johnstown area and 

that's where we serve. Our apartment is pretty nice. 

It's the second to top floor of the 4 story building. 

We went out tracting and it was pretty fun! It 

was snowing and we were talking to people on the 

street and knocking on doors! (oh yeah, it's been 

snowing [well not anymore] for about 3 days now 

with a couple breaks but it's been pretty 

constant) We were trying to get to an investigators 

house and we went down this shortcut road that doesn't 

get plowed, so we were trudging through probably 2 

feet of snow, it was awesome! We were able to 

teach this guy (20-24 y.o.) about the restoration 

and he seemed very interested! His name is Joseph 

just like Joseph Smith, and he had the same 

questions as Joseph S. too!! So we gave him a 

pamphlet and we're going to get back to him! 

This is very hard work, and it seems I usually 

don't get enough sleep at night though I sleep 

the whole night through, it'll take some getting 

used to:)But I love it!

That's all the exciting stuff that's happened so 

far! I’m loving it out here! It's the place I 

need to be!  Oh yeah and there are catholic 

churches around here like there are LDS churches 

in Orem, they're EVERYWHERE!!  

-Love Elder Serrano