Firechat - Can't send messages

I have a Firechat implementation that initializes properly but when logged in you can create and enter rooms but the messages go nowhere. I've built functions to handle the sending of messages but I don't think it's connecting the FirechatUI and Firechat objects correctly to the Firebase database.

function initChat(user) {
    var room = '';
    var db = firebase.database().ref("chat");
    var chat = new FirechatUI(db, document.getElementById('firechat'));
    var api = chat._chat;
    console.log(api);
    api.setUser(user.uid, user.displayName, function(user) {
        api.resumeSession();
    });

    chat.setUser(user.uid, user.displayName, function(user) {
        chat.resumeSession();
    });

    api.on('message-add', function(messagedRoom, messageContent) {
        console.log('Sent message to room: '+messagedRoom.id+' with the content "'+messageContent+'"');
        api.sendMessage(messagedRoom.id, messageContent, 'default');
    });

    api.on('room-enter', function(enteredRoom) {
        api.enterRoom(enteredRoom.id);
        room = enteredRoom.id;
    });

    api.on('room-exit', function(exitedRoom) {
        api.leaveRoom(exitedRoom.id);
        room = '';
    });

    isInitialized = true;
}

The "message-add" event never gets triggered but the "room-enter" and "room-exit" events do.

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