Jmeter Conversion not bringing over parameter names or values

When I run the conversion command:
maven -Djmeterfile=examplefile.jmx lotka:jmeter-convert
it will run successfully. But when I attept to run maven lotka after I moved the suite file to the correct spot it fails because it is not passing parameters into the page. when I looked at the suite file I can see that it created a <parameter> for each paramter but it did not include any of the parameter names or any of the values as below:
<param>
<paramName>
</paramName>
<paramValue>
</paramValue>
</param>
<param>
<paramName>
</paramName>
<paramValue>
</paramValue>
</param>
<param>
<paramName>
</paramName>
<paramValue>
</paramValue>
</param>

This is a problem that is keeping me from using this as my functional testing tool. Is there a fix for it out there already. Is anyone else having this problem.