The bankruptcy of an adoption agency has left an Edmonton-area couple worried about how to bring the two children they have adopted in Ethiopia home to Canada.

Mark and Sharla Kostelyk of Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, were in the final stages of a 2½-year process to adopt a boy, 5, and his sister, 3, from Ethiopia when the agency they were working with, Ontario-based Imagine, went bankrupt.

The couple has already adopted three children from within the foster care system in Canada.

Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which runs Imagine Adoption, based in Cambridge, Ont., posted a bankruptcy notice on its website Monday.

Sharla Kostelyk is shopping for items she'll need when the siblings she and her husband have adopted from Ethiopia are brought to Canada. (CBC)"This is obviously very unexpected," Sharla Kostelyk said on Thursday.

"We passed court in June to make us their parents, so we were expecting the visa from Canada's end would come in October, and we would be travelling in October to pick them up," she said.

The couple is now hoping to bring the children to Canada sooner, she said.

The adoption agency operates a transition house in Ethiopia and when news of the bankruptcy surfaced, the couple was told that only eight days worth of food were left at the house for the 50 children living there, Kostelyk said.

"It's a terrible feeling to be half way across the world and to know that your kids are in danger and in need and there's really not much you can do about it," she said. "You feel absolutely helpless."

Shopping for clothes

She said she has been spending the last couple of days shopping for clothing, shoes and toiletries for the children she's hoping will soon be coming to Canada.

The Kostelyk family hope they will be able to bring their two adopted Ethiopian children — a boy, 5, and his sister, 3 — to Canada soon despite the bankruptcy of the adoption agency involved. (CBC)"We've been advocating in every way that we know how to try to get visas to bring our kids home," Kostelyk said.

The original copies of documents needed in order for the visas to be issued were entrusted to the adoption agency and the whereabouts of those documents is unknown now that the agency has filed for bankruptcy, she said.

The couple does have copies of those documents, she said, adding her husband will take them with him when he leaves for Ethiopia on the weekend in an effort to make arrangements to bring the children to Edmonton.

More than 60 families in Alberta and hundreds more across Canada have been affected by the bankruptcy of the adoption agency.