AWS Lambda Python with MySQL

I'm trying to connect to mysql from my AWS Lambda script.
I did
pip install --allow-external mysql-connector-python mysql-connector-python -t <dir>
to install mysql-connector-python in local directory.
I zipped the file and uploaded it to AWS Lambda where my python files are being executed.
My scripts are executing correctly up to the point where I initialize a mysql connection.
I have this

log('about to set connection for db')
connection = mysql.connector.connect(user=DB_USER, password=DB_PASSWORD, host=DB_HOST, database=DB_DATABASE)
query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE customer_email LIKE '%s' LIMIT 1"
log('set connection for DB')

'about to set connection for db' is being logged but 'set connection for DB' is never logged and my program hits a timeout and stops executing.

What might I be doing wrong?

EDIT: This is my class that I'm calling from lambda_function.py

import mysql.connector
import logging
from mysql.connector import errorcode

class MySql( object ):

    USER    =None
    PASSWORD=None
    HOST    =None
    DATABASE=None


    logger = logging.getLogger()
    logger.setLevel( logging.INFO )

    def __init__(self, user, password, host, database):
        global USER, PASSWORD, HOST, DATABASE
        USER        = user
        PASSWORD    = password
        HOST        = host
        DATABASE    = database

    def getId( self, customer_email ):
        email_exists = False

        connection = mysql.connector.connect(user=USER, password=PASSWORD, host=HOST, database=DATABASE)
        query = "SELECT * FROM customers WHERE customer_email LIKE '%s' LIMIT 1"

        cursor = connection.cursor()
        cursor.execute( query % customer_email )
        data = cursor.fetchall()
        id = None
        for row in data :
            id = row[1]
            break

        cursor.close()
        connection.close()
        return id

    def insertCustomer( self, customer_email, id ):
        log('about to set connection for db')
        connection = mysql.connector.connect(user=USER, password=PASSWORD, host=HOST, database=DATABASE)
        log('set connection for DB')
        cursor = connection.cursor()
        try:
            cursor.execute("INSERT INTO customers VALUES (%s,%s)",( customer_email, id ))
            connection.commit()
        except:
            connection.rollback()
            connection.close()
    def log( logStr):
        logger.info( logStr )

def main():
    user = 'xxx'
    password = 'xxx'
    host = ' xxx'
    database = 'xxx'

    mysql = MySql( user, password, host, database )

    id = mysql.getId('testing')
    if id == None:
        mysql.insertCustomer('blah','blahblah')
    print id

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

When I execute the MySql.py locally my code works fine.
My database gets updated but nothing happens when I run it from AWS.