Unexpected Communication Issue with Alexa

I created my Alexa skill as an AWS Lambda java app and used the session example provided in the Alexa Skills Kit. I followed all the steps given on the Amazon site including all the steps given here Alexa not finding my Skill. Since Amazon doesn't fully give instructions at this point to use Lambda with java I followed the steps given in this tutorial http://ift.tt/1IyLE2G which I found on the Amazon forums page. When I run the code in Lambda it accepts it but only shows this as the Execution result:

{
"version": "1.0",
"sessionAttributes": {}
}

When I try the Skill with the echo I got an "Unexpected Communication Issue": Request Identifier:amzn1.echo-api.request.173c5d6c-8e97-493c-9efd-beb88cffd82f there was a problem communicating with the requested application.

Has anyone run into the same problem? I figure it might have to do with my zip packaging, so does anyone know the right way to package it?