my find my friends app does not pull up my contacts list, why?

I don't use the app so I'm only guessing, but you might want to check Settings>Privacy>Contacts to see if you need to turn the Find My Friends app on there in order to give it access to your contacts.

Maybe someone else here that uses FMF will jump in with a suggestion.

You might also want to post this question over in the Using iPhone forum. You're likely to run into many more users that use the app there.