Equilibrium theme: php query showposts doesn’t show posts

Hi:

Here’s the educational site I’m working on:
eigobama.com

The installation instructions say:

Simply change the ID number to reflect whichever category you want to use for the Featured section. Repeat this step twice, as there will be two more lines you need to edit. “Edit Below 2″ & “Edit Below 3″.

I have changed the ID numbers as instructed, but either there’s no change in the posts on the front page at all or it breaks the layout, deletes one post from the top line, adds an additional line: very unclear why.

any help you can give would be much appreciated: there is no budget to hire the designer, and he suggested trying here.

thank you,
Terri