Unable to access app specific internal Storage

Question

I'm trying to save state during rotation and repopulate a list with specific files I've created in internal app storage.

currentFile = new File(this.getFilesDir(), timeString);

After accessing the timeString from an outstate bundle. It Doesn't let me access the file.

currentFile = new File(this.getFilesDir(), timeString);

I've used both getCacheDir() and getFilesDir() tested different versions of the code using getAbsolutePath and messing with the prefix using different versions of file://. I keep getting

open failed: ENOENT (No such file or directory)

edit: Eliminated use of local variable to reduce confusion