I think you've got the idea...but one other thing I just thought about...

You're checking RCIF in the code. If you're checking RCIF, that means there's already a byte in the receive buffer. HSERIN probably waits for the next byte to come along (basically ignoring what's already in the buffer). If you're already WAITing for a specific character, then why also wait for a flag in hardware? Also, you can make use of the TIMEOUT in the SERIN/HSERIN to keep your code from getting stuck.