text: These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| He's been dubbed the "Schindler of Congo" for acts of heroism, but now he's the one in need of saving. 
   
   Pastor Marrion P'Udongo earned his nickname for saving nearly 100 people from murderous militiamen in 2003 — but that was only one of his many acts of courage. 
   
   He's gone into the bush to coax out child soldiers, helped scores of rape victims secure medical treatment, fed and clothed inmates in Congo's most notorious prison and helps run an orphanage for children impacted by his nation's decades-long war. 
   
   Pastor Marrion P'Udongo is seen ministering to pygmies. Pastor Marrion P’Udongo 
   
   But today, the man also known simply as "pastor" to many spends his days hooked up to a dialysis machine and praying for a miracle. 
   
   "I don't feel in my heart that I should die now," he told NBC News. "I still have a lot to do." 
   
   P'Udongo nearly died in 2011 from kidney failure; a massive fundraising campaign helped cover the cost of a life-saving transplant. But the donor organ was slow to take and this spring he got bad news: his body was rejecting the kidney. 
   
   Suddenly, he was back where he started — and desperately in need of assistance. 
   
   Several people volunteered as new donors. A match was found and paperwork arranged for a transplant at a hospital in India, which reportedly has a higher success rate for such procedures. 
   
   "There are really people who want to help. So many. But the challenge is that we don't have money," P'Udongo said. 
   
   He needs around $35,000 for the procedure. The pastor is currently living off his $200 a month salary and a patchwork of donations to pay for medical care and rent in Uganda's capital, where he gets dialysis three times a week and only goes out for church. 
   
   "It's like a life in a prison," he said. "You can't go far from where there is no dialysis." 
   
   Pastor Marrion P'Udongo in the hospital. Pastor Marrion P’Udongo 
   
   He can't take joy from food anymore — most of the time, he doesn't have an appetite — and says with a trademark giggle that he's lost so much weight he's "like a little boy." 
   
   "I'm not very strong to walk and many times I feel a lot of pain," he said, turning serious. "Sometimes you feel like you will not make it any more." 
   
   P'Udongo's current reality stands in stark contrast to his life in Bunia, where his work made him feel "like I'm doing one of the best things in the world." 
   
   Human-rights workers, journalists and Hollywood stars like Ben Affleck who worked with him there agree — and are fighting to ensure he gets back there to continue his mission. 
   
   “ He’s like a Moses character … Even the most wicked militia guys, they loved him” 
   
   Affleck — founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative — called the pastor a "friend and a hero." 
   
   He said he first met P'Udongo in 2008 on a visit to northeastern Congo, where the pastor helped him understand the "complexity and possibility" of wartorn Bunia along with the "stark realities of life" for those affected by war. 
   
   "Pastor is a genius connector, translator, producer and fixer but he is first and foremost a great humanitarian," Affleck said in an emailed statement to NBC News. 
   
   Bryan Mealer is one of the reporters who relied on P'Udongo as a "fixer," or guide, during Congo's war. 
   
   "Look at the world right now… you don't see a lot of really good people left," Mealer said. "This is one of them." 
   
   Mealer — who has led fundraising efforts for pastor's first and this latest transplant effort — said he was "incredibly moved" from the moment he met P'Udongo. 
   
   "He has kind of a power around him — it's a magic," he explained, adding that what sets P'Udongo apart was his ability to access all sides in the protracted conflict. 
   
   "He's like a Moses character," Mealer said. "You would walk through the bush and people would just run out to him. He was this kind of lighthouse through all these years of war. Even the most wicked militia guys, they loved him." 
   
   The Schindler comparisons started after the siege of Bunia in May 2003. Ethnic Lendu militiamen tore into the town and started butchering members of the Hema ethnic group in the streets. 
   
   Dozens of desperate Hema went to the pastor's house seeking refuge. 
   
   "Hema were being captured by the militias in order to be slaughtered," the pastor explained. He sheltered around 70 people for about a week — with little food or water but plenty of prayer — until fighters kicked down his door. 
   
   "The militia came in and they wanted to kill the people who were there," P'Udongo said. "All Hema — including my wife." 
   
   Pastor Marrion P’Udongo preaches to a large crowd. Pastor Marrion P’Udongo 
   
   He said he thought he might die but felt compelled to act, so he pleaded for mercy. 
   
   "People cannot be killed by dogs," he said. "I was feeling that passion in my heart to ... plead with them." 
   
   The militiamen seemed undeterred, until a fighter came in who'd seen pastor preach. 
   
   "He said, 'we know this pastor, he's a good man so we cannot kill these people here,'" P'Udongo recalled. That stroke of luck — or act of God, as pastor describes it — secured their safety, and the militiamen escorted all of them to a U.N. base. 
   
   When asked about the Schindler nickname, P'Udongo laughs. 
   
   "It's a big name," he said with his giggle. While he acknowledges saving "many people" during the war — he insists he was just doing his job. 
   
   "It's my responsibility as a pastor … not only to preach but also to risk our life for the sake of others," he explained. 
   
   Pastor has carried on his saving since that moment in Bunia, most recently devoting his time to his prison ministry and helping run the St. Kizito orphanage there. 
   
   His colleague there, Elysee Pifwa, volunteered and matched as his kidney donor — a testament to pastor's impact, according to Mealer. 
   
   "When you put it into terms of him being gone … There's no getting him back," Mealer said. "There's no reproducing someone like this who has given, who gives his life for others." 
   
   He said that the 80 kids at the orphanage — many brought in by P'Udongo himself — would be devastated to lose their protector. 
   
   "Those kids need him — they really depend on him," added Mealer, one of the orphanage's founders. "He's the oil that helps that place run." 
   
   Pastor Marrion P'Udongo ministers to pygmies. Pastor Marrion P’Udongo 
   
   P'Udongo was an orphan himself. Early on, he made money smuggling gasoline across the border between Uganda and Congo before finding God in the 90s. He began ministering to refugees from the Rwandan genocide who had come into Congo. Then, fighting hit home. 
   
   "It was like a calling … to help his community," Mealer said. 
   
   He described how P'Udongo would go into the bush to preach about God but also about the developments and how to get help — a phenomenon Mealer witnessed while pastor helped him as a "fixer" navigating coverage of the war. 
   
   "To see someone who is positive and to see someone who had this light shining through them was so good for people," Mealer said. "This was a place where there was absolutely no hope." 
   
   Mealer said small acts of kindness to help save the pastor's life would reverberate and benefit the orphans, prisoners and countless others touched by P'Udongo and those who could be helped in the future. 
   
   "This is a good man doing good work in a place where there isn't a lot of goodness left," he said. "It's a good person working on this earth, helping people without a voice and without a lot of power. If he's gone, that will be lost. The darkness that tries to force itself into every small place will win again." 
   
   P'Udongo said he's more worried about his family — his wife of 16 years, four young biological children and one young orphan he has taken in to raise as his own — and his country. 
   
   "I'm not feeling that I should die now," the pastor said. "I think my presence is doing something there. If I am not there… who will fill that gap?" 
   
   "No, I should not die now… There's still a lot to do." ||||| This past July, I got a call saying that a dear friend had suffered severe kidney failure and wasn't expected to live. Pastor Marrion P'Udongo has been called the "Oskar Schindler of Congo," a man who's helped save and nurture hundreds of lives in a country where war has claimed millions. 
   
   To the people of northeastern Congo, Pastor Marrion was both a saint and a hero, providing shelter to the hunted and hope to a community withered by violence. And to journalists like myself, he was an ace fixer and translator -- one of the few people to offer access into this complicated and often incredibly dangerous conflict. Over the past decade, the pastor has worked for just about every major news organization in the world. Chances are if you've read a story about Congo in recent years, or seen one on television, the pastor probably helped make it happen. 
   
   As colleagues and I scrambled to get the pastor to nearby Kampala, Uganda, for emergency dialysis, I thought about what an immense loss his death would be -- not to us reporters, but to the embattled country itself. For the pastor, working for journalists was just a way to finance his own war against the war, a battle he waged alone and most always at the risk of his own safety. 
   
   In early May 2003, his town of Bunia was invaded by ethnic Lendu militia looking to gain control over area gold mines. This sideshow of Congo's bigger war -- fought largely over the country's vast mineral resources -- pit the Lendu against their rival Hema, who owned many businesses in Bunia and whose militia controlled the mines. As gunboys -- many under the age of 16 -- marched through town, they pulled Hema residents from their homes and executed them in the streets. The Hema, close cousins of the Rwandan Tutsi who were targeted in the 1994 genocide, fled by the hundreds to a nearby United Nations base for refuge, only to be locked out. With no place to turn, many ran to the home of Pastor Marrion, whose own wife Juliette was a Hema. For days, as bodies of neighbors and relatives filled the streets, the pastor sheltered over 70 people in his small living room. 
   
   Gunboys finally discovered them one afternoon and kicked down the door. One by one, the group was stripped naked and marched into the road to be shot, along with the pastor, his wife, and their three children. But before any bullets were fired, one of the lieutenants recognized the pastor. He'd once been a member of his congregation. 
   
   "This pastor can't die," he argued with his commander. "He is too good a man to be killed like this." The commander ordered the gunboys away and looked at the pastor. "I should kill you and everyone here," he said. "But something is telling me no." 
   
   Miraculously, he then ordered the militia to escort the group to the UN headquarters, which had since opened its gates to the displaced. Once they were gone, the militia returned and looted everything in the pastor's house. 
   
   Years later, that same commander was arrested by the Congolese government and put in prison. The first visitor he received was the pastor himself. 
   
   "The reason I am alive is because of him," he said, breaking into one of his signature laughs that caused his eyes to disappear beneath his round cheeks. "My chief, we are living because of the grace of God!" 
   
   In the following years, as fighting caused millions to flee their homes and into the bush, only to be raped and pillaged by soldiers and militia, the pastor became a kind of lighthouse for the multitude of scattered souls. He ministered in the squalid displaced camps throughout northeastern Congo, where spirits were broken and sickness claimed dozens each day. He helped operate St. Kizito Orphanage, started by Catholic nuns in Bunia to house 135 children whose families were killed during the war. With pastor as chief fundraiser, the sisters now fend for themselves. 
   
   Often, the pastor would venture alone into the bush with a megaphone and sacks of food in search of child soldiers -- many orphaned themselves during the fighting and left as easy prey for militia. Despite routine death threats, he convinced many to disarm, and if possible, try and become children once again. 
   
   "We should not just preach that people who believe in God will go to Heaven," he once said. "We should know how to spare their lives when they're still on this earth." 
   
   The pastor is now languishing in a Kampala boarding house, weak and unable to travel, except for his weekly trips for dialysis. His doctors say that in order to live, he desperately needs a kidney transplant. The nearest place for the operation is Johannesburg, South Africa; we're also working with doctors in neighboring Rwanda who may be able to help. The price tag for such a procedure is about $76,000. 
   
   The good news is we found a kidney donor. My colleagues and I have since started a campaign to raise the money. By donating to the Pastor Marrion Fund, you can help. 
   
   In your lifetime, there are few moments when you're given the opportunity to directly save another person's life. And as Schindler said, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." In a place like Congo, nothing rings more true. The country needs its hero now more than ever, not just to offer hope to the broken and scattered, but to make sure their stories get told. So I ask you now, who's with me? Who's going to help me save the guy? 
   
   Go to Indiegogo.com/The-Pastor-Marrion-Fund/ to make a contribution. 
   
   For more information, e-mail me at: thepastormarrionfund@gmail.com ||||| The war in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo was one of the most complex conflicts on Earth, even before the defeat of the M23 rebel movement, perhaps the conflict's most powerful combatant, in late 2013. 
   
   Although there are more than 1.6 million people displaced, along with frequent fighting between the Congolese government and the region's constellation of armed groups, the conflict often defies a label as straightforward as "war." 
   
   Even after M23's downfall, the region is home to scores of combatants whose motivations range from plunder and ethnic self-defense to overthrowing the Congolese government and overthrowing the governments of neighboring countries. 
   
   Violence is occasionally aimed at the Congolese state, whose military is one of the region's major human-rights abusers and a primary driver of displacement. But overall, the war in the Congo is more like a web of mutually reinforcing social and political conditions, rather than a confrontation between easily definable ideological or political opponents. 
   
   As a result, mapping the conflict can be incredibly difficult. And the conceptual challenges aren't the only reason that territorial maps, like the ones that have become familiar for followers of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, are so difficult and time-consuming to produce for the Congo. 
   
   Misinformation travels more easily than people in the DRC's mountainous and underdeveloped eastern edge. And mapping the region's armed groups requires meticulous ground-level fieldwork in a difficult and often dangerous environment. 
   
   The Congo Research Group, a project at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, has now produced a definitive map of one of the world's most severe yet least-covered and -understood conflicts. The map, published in October, shows the areas of influence for 69 armed groups in the eastern Congo, displaying where these groups carry out attacks, impose taxation, or have a notable operational presence. 
   
   It's an invaluable piece of scholarship and reporting — and it shows just how complex the situation has gotten. 
   
   Even with no prior knowledge of the conflict, which has endured in some form since 1996, the map conveys one of the biggest obstacles to normalcy in the region: There are too many active armed groups. 
   
   While most of them field fewer than 200 fighters each, their sheer number reflects the Congolese state's inability to exert its authority over the region, or to incentivize these groups to lay down their arms. It also reveals a lack of cohesion among combatants — and the ease with which local warlords or even political leaders can mobilize their own militias. 
   
   The groups are also constantly splintering and shifting. According to the Congo Research Group report that accompanied the group's map, there were 20 armed groups in the region in 2008, while the map shows the areas of influence of nearly 70 such groups. 
   
   As Christoph Vogel, a senior fellow at the Congo Research Group and one of the creators of the CRG map, told Business Insider, the map is just a snapshot of a highly fluid ground-level situation. 
   
   "The half-life of such a mapping is extremely short as conflict in eastern Congo is constantly evolving," says Vogel, who adds that researchers learned of "two 'new' small militias just days after publishing this map." 
   
   "It is literally impossible — even for the UN mission and the government itself — to have absolutely correct and precise information on each armed group's exact zone of control," Vogel told Business Insider. 
   
   Militias and the national military often operate in the same areas, and the offices of the central government sometimes remain open even in places where antigovernment groups are strongest. 
   
   "In many areas, influence is not monopolized," Vogel said. 
   
   Another built-in challenge of mapping the conflict is that the size of an armed group's area of influence also doesn't necessarily correlate with that group's actual strength. 
   
   "Some stronger groups who traditionally maintain rather tight control in small areas appear 'weaker' on the map than smaller but very mobile groups covering intermittently a much larger area," Vogel said. 
   
   Even with these inherent drawbacks, the map gives a vivid sense of how the conflict in the eastern Congo has persisted for so long — and of why even a seemingly major development like the defeat of a leading rebel movement wasn't enough to solve the region's problems. ||||| 
   
   
   
   Several weeks ago I wrote about Pastor Marrion P’Udongo, my fixer in the Democratic Republic of Congo who’d suffered kidney failure. Pastor Marrion worked as a fixer with just about every journalist who passed through the region, and spent years guiding photographers through displacement camps, firefights, and into the homes of people who’d been raped and assaulted. And as a result, the world is more informed about this chronically underreported conflict. 
   
   When I wrote the story in April, he was in Nairobi on the verge of dying while we scrambled to find money for a life-saving kidney transplant. Many people responded with such amazing generosity that we managed to pull the funds together for Marrion’s procedure. And on May 26, he received a new kidney, donated by his nephew. 
   
   
   
   It was an enormous achievement, but that wasn’t the end. Two days after the transplant, the new kidney went into shock, or as the Pastor’s doctors described, “a state of slumber.” Pastor Marrion suffered excruciating pain and his body became swollen. Then, as we feared, doctors informed us the body was rejecting the new kidney. We feared for the worst, so we began scouring eastern Congo looking for another possible donor, a process that before had taken us months. 
   
   Then one afternoon, Riccardo Gangale, a fellow photographer and close friend of the Pastor, called and said the kidney was starting to show signs of waking up. Pastor Marrion’s body was beginning to heal. 
   
   Two weeks later and Pastor Marrion has recovered well enough to send me an email. Without souls like Riccardo, Bryan Mealer, Taylor Krauss, and the over 500 people who gave anything from $2 to $8,000, this amazing feat would have never taken place – proof that miracles can happen through the power of community. Pastor’s words to you and me were as follows: 
   
   “My health is better, my result from the hospital today was so good. 
   
   My kidney is working well…Thank you so much for saving my life 
   
   God bless you and thank you all.” 
   
   And because of the donations, the pastor can hopefully go home soon. He’ll be returning to the St. Kizito orphanage that he helps manage in the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to over 100 kids whose parents perished during the war. He’ll return to the primary school he started in the Tagba displaced camp, where people who lost everything to violence can at least know their children’s education is secure. He’ll go home to his community, his family, and the journalists who still need his courage and skills to help them tell this story. 
   
   However, Pastor Marrion still needs support. The operation, medication, and hospital bills have drained all of the money raised. In the coming weeks, the pastor will require another surgery to open his urinary tract, which will cost upwards of $5,000. In addition, we need to cover the cost of vital anti-rejection medication for at least several months until the pastor is able to work again. 
   
   And if possible, we’d like to set up a small education fund for Uyer Omaka, Pastor Marrion’s 24-year old nephew who so bravely volunteered as the donor. In a society as broken as Congo, it is encouraging to know there are still young men as noble and selfless as he. Already he’s following a path of service and sacrifice like his uncle. We only hope to help his journey. 
   
   To learn more about Pastor Marrion and to donate to the fund set up to help him, visit Indiegogo.com. 
   
   Marcus Bleasdale, an award-winning photographer based in Oslo, is a member of the VII Photo Agency. Bleasdale has published two books, “One Hundred Years of Darkness” and “The Rape of a Nation“. ||||| This past July, I got a call saying that a dear friend had suffered severe kidney failure and wasn't expected to live. Pastor Marrion P'Udongo has been called the "Oskar Schindler of Congo," a man who's helped save and nurture hundreds of lives in a country where war has claimed millions. 
   
   To the people of northeastern Congo, Pastor Marrion was both a saint and a hero, providing shelter to the hunted and hope to a community withered by violence. And to journalists like myself, he was an ace fixer and translator -- one of the few people to offer access into this complicated and often incredibly dangerous conflict. Over the past decade, the pastor has worked for just about every major news organization in the world. Chances are if you've read a story about Congo in recent years, or seen one on television, the pastor probably helped make it happen. 
   
   As colleagues and I scrambled to get the pastor to nearby Kampala, Uganda, for emergency dialysis, I thought about what an immense loss his death would be -- not to us reporters, but to the embattled country itself. For the pastor, working for journalists was just a way to finance his own war against the war, a battle he waged alone and most always at the risk of his own safety. 
   
   In early May 2003, his town of Bunia was invaded by ethnic Lendu militia looking to gain control over area gold mines. This sideshow of Congo's bigger war -- fought largely over the country's vast mineral resources -- pit the Lendu against their rival Hema, who owned many businesses in Bunia and whose militia controlled the mines. As gunboys -- many under the age of 16 -- marched through town, they pulled Hema residents from their homes and executed them in the streets. The Hema, close cousins of the Rwandan Tutsi who were targeted in the 1994 genocide, fled by the hundreds to a nearby United Nations base for refuge, only to be locked out. With no place to turn, many ran to the home of Pastor Marrion, whose own wife Juliette was a Hema. For days, as bodies of neighbors and relatives filled the streets, the pastor sheltered over 70 people in his small living room. 
   
   Gunboys finally discovered them one afternoon and kicked down the door. One by one, the group was stripped naked and marched into the road to be shot, along with the pastor, his wife, and their three children. But before any bullets were fired, one of the lieutenants recognized the pastor. He'd once been a member of his congregation. 
   
   "This pastor can't die," he argued with his commander. "He is too good a man to be killed like this." The commander ordered the gunboys away and looked at the pastor. "I should kill you and everyone here," he said. "But something is telling me no." 
   
   Miraculously, he then ordered the militia to escort the group to the UN headquarters, which had since opened its gates to the displaced. Once they were gone, the militia returned and looted everything in the pastor's house. 
   
   Years later, that same commander was arrested by the Congolese government and put in prison. The first visitor he received was the pastor himself. 
   
   "The reason I am alive is because of him," he said, breaking into one of his signature laughs that caused his eyes to disappear beneath his round cheeks. "My chief, we are living because of the grace of God!" 
   
   In the following years, as fighting caused millions to flee their homes and into the bush, only to be raped and pillaged by soldiers and militia, the pastor became a kind of lighthouse for the multitude of scattered souls. He ministered in the squalid displaced camps throughout northeastern Congo, where spirits were broken and sickness claimed dozens each day. He helped operate St. Kizito Orphanage, started by Catholic nuns in Bunia to house 135 children whose families were killed during the war. With pastor as chief fundraiser, the sisters now fend for themselves. 
   
   Often, the pastor would venture alone into the bush with a megaphone and sacks of food in search of child soldiers -- many orphaned themselves during the fighting and left as easy prey for militia. Despite routine death threats, he convinced many to disarm, and if possible, try and become children once again. 
   
   "We should not just preach that people who believe in God will go to Heaven," he once said. "We should know how to spare their lives when they're still on this earth." 
   
   The pastor is now languishing in a Kampala boarding house, weak and unable to travel, except for his weekly trips for dialysis. His doctors say that in order to live, he desperately needs a kidney transplant. The nearest place for the operation is Johannesburg, South Africa; we're also working with doctors in neighboring Rwanda who may be able to help. The price tag for such a procedure is about $76,000. 
   
   The good news is we found a kidney donor. My colleagues and I have since started a campaign to raise the money. By donating to the Pastor Marrion Fund, you can help. 
   
   In your lifetime, there are few moments when you're given the opportunity to directly save another person's life. And as Schindler said, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." In a place like Congo, nothing rings more true. The country needs its hero now more than ever, not just to offer hope to the broken and scattered, but to make sure their stories get told. So I ask you now, who's with me? Who's going to help me save the guy? 
   
   Go to Indiegogo.com/The-Pastor-Marrion-Fund/ to make a contribution.
target: – Marrion P'Udongo is recognized simply as "pastor" by many and has pulled off a laundry list of heroic acts in the war-torn Republic of the Congo, including assisting child soldiers and rape victims and helping manage an orphanage, per NBC News. His other nickname, the "Schindler of Congo," came about after a 2003 massacre of ethnic Hema residents in Bunia by ethnic Lendu militiamen: P'Udongo housed 70 or so frightened Hema for about a week, but militiamen forced their way in and threatened to kill everyone—until P'Udongo successfully pleaded for their lives and they were all brought to safety. But now the people's savior is the one who needs help as he languishes in Uganda hooked up to a dialysis machine, the result of a failing kidney he received in a 2011 transplant. But while a new donor has been secured and a hospital in India with a high success rate for his type of procedure is ready to perform it, the $35,000 price tag is overwhelming for P'Udongo, who makes $200 a month, NBC notes. The people he's touched are doing whatever they can to help him: The same reporter who helped fundraise for the pastor in 2011 is doing it again. "Look at the world right now … you don't see a lot of really good people left," Bryan Mealer says on Generosity.com. "This is one of them." P'Udongo even has a friend in Hollywood: Ben Affleck, who founded advocacy group Eastern Congo Initiative and met P'Udongo in 2008, when the actor visited northeastern Congo. Meanwhile, P'Udongo continues to fight, mostly for his wife, four kids, an orphan he's taken in, and all the others he advocates for. "If I am not there … who will fill that gap?" he says to NBC. "No, I should not die now … There's still a lot to do." (Read what Bryan Mealer wrote about the pastor in 2011 for the Huffington Post.)