Pastor Leroy Cloud, senior pastor of International Christian Assembly, one of Hong Kong's largest churches and part of the Assembly of God organisation which has churches in 150 countries Age: 62.
Career path: My mother was Jewish and my father an American-Indian. They agreed at first to raise me with no religion, but when I was two years old my mother went to an Assembly of God church and became a Christian. When I was five and a half, I went to a children's meeting and made a commitment to the Lord.
When I left high school, I went to the Southwest Bible School in Texas for three years and then I travelled from church to church until I had my first permanent church in Arizona. I was State Youth Leader, then went on to become a pastor in San Francisco Bay for 12 years. Then I went back to Phoenix, Arizona, where I started a church. In 1979, I started travelling overseas for gospel meetings or crusades in India, Japan, Africa and Indonesia. I did this for 10 years.
In 1988, I was asked by the Assembly of God to come and live in Hong Kong and travel from here. I arrived in 1989 and travelled extensively to other Asian countries for two years until I became the Pastor of International Christian Assembly in January 1992.
We paid $82 million on Friday for our church building in North Point which we now own. The money was raised in just two years from our congregation and from Hong Kong people, some of whom are not even churchgoers.
Pastor Cloud's day: I work an 80-hour week and sometimes more, like this past week. I get to the office around 7 am and leave when the day's work is done, often late at night. Today, ICA and other churches in Hong Kong will gather for a praise service thanking God for the handover and for what he is going to do in the lives of Hong Kong people. Members of our church have been praying and fasting for the past 40 days to seek God's blessing for the handover.