Custom Slicer Loses Value When Toggling Visibility

I attempted to use the filtering API and it solved half of my problem.  Now, when I hide the visual the filter does not go away, but when I make the visual visable again, the filter gets lost.  Is there something I should be doing to persist the filter behind the scenes and reload it when making the visual visable again?

Here is my code in the update method:

        let filterTarget: IFilterColumnTarget = {
            table: categories.source.queryName.substr(0, categories.source.queryName.indexOf('.')),
            column: categories.source.displayName
        };
        
        const basicFilter: IBasicFilter = {
            $schema: "http://powerbi.com/product/schema#basic",
            // target: {
            //     table:"Date",
            //     column:"CalendarYear"
            // },
            target: filterTarget,
            operator: "In",
            values: [dateSelectionValue], //[2019],
            filterType: FilterType.Basic
        }

        this.visualHost.applyJsonFilter(basicFilter, "general", "filter", FilterAction.merge);

This is what I added to the capabilities file:

"general": {
            "displayName": "General",
            "displayNameKey": "formattingGeneral",
            "properties": {
                "filter": {
                    "type": {
                        "filter": true
                    }
                },
                "selfFilter": {
                    "type": {
                        "filter": {
                            "selfFilter": true
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Thank you