Stuck!

So Jeremy and I immensly enjoyed out time in Iowa. We were sad to leave on Monday but not as sad as we would be about 3 hours into our trip. So we left about 12 that day and around 3:00 the van dies I am like great we will be stuck for at least an hour. Well to my surprise the van cranked after 30 minutes of waiting by the side of the van. I was like okay this is good, we should be able to get back on the road and get going down the road. Well to my frustration it died again thirty minutes down the road. I was like "Great" well I get it cranked about thirty minutes later and about 20 minutes down the road it dies again. I was beyond frustration and I called my dad and was like what do we do. So we ended stopping in the little town we were at (Hannibal, MO) and checked into a hotel and get the car towed to a local car garage. The first thing they found (they thought) was the spark plugs and I was like no that makes no sense. Well long story short they hadnt told the mechanic exactly what was going on with the car and when I explained it to him he was like yeah that definitely is not the problem so back to the drawing board. The second thing they found (they thought) was the catalytic convertor which made more sense but I just had a feeling that that was the problem. So I talked to the manager and I was like I want to make absolute sure that is the problem before we spend this much money and we get thirty minutes down the road and it dies again. So they do some more testing and low and behold they found out it is not the catalytic convertor but was actually the water pump. So now we are set to get home on Friday instead of tuesday night.