CCLableBMFont showing up as white squares

Hello, I am currently working with cocos2d-x 2.2.3 for android.
I am trying to set up a bitmap font for my project and while it loads fine, I get a white box surrounding my text. I have tried FIVE .fnt files that I have made as well as the ones from the Label sample provided by cocos. Because no fonts seem to work, I am assuming there is some error in my code.

Does anyone know how to fix this? Here is the code I am working with:

    CCTexture2D::setDefaultAlphaPixelFormat(kCCTexture2DPixelFormat_RGBA8888);

    CCLabelBMFont *sLabel;
    sLabel = CCLabelBMFont::create("Test", "fonts/LaneBM.fnt");
    sLabel->setColor(ccc3 (0, 0, 0));

    // position the label on the center of the screen
    sLabel->setPosition(ccp (visibleSize.width / 2, visibleSize.height / 2));

    // add the label as a child to this layer
    addChild(sLabel, 1);

Changing the color to black using setColor does not seem to work either.