Morning After theme: Featured Post Function

I just started working on this theme to use as a arts & culture magazine. Everything is going smoothly EXCEPT the fact that the Featured Post function is not working though it seemed pretty simple according to the documentation for this theme…all you needed to do was create a ‘category’ titled ‘featured’ and assign a post to that category, add an excerpt, and a custom filed for image to propagate along with it. I did all of these things but it is not functioning at all. Kicks it over to ‘recent posts’ when i add another post (not assigned to ‘Featured” category but one of my others).
Essentially I want this function to work because we are using it to highlight artists we are creating in-depth profiles for so it would be great to have on the front page.

Anyway else using this theme and can give me feedback?
Here is my link:
https://www.flabmag.com/test

Any feedback is GREATLY appreciated! We go live on the 1st o March.