After poking around some more on these forums and seeing other people not receiving support on their issues, I decided to really scour the internet and fixed the problem myself. The staff on this site are good people, I'm sure, but a lot of questions go unanswered and that is unacceptable.
In case anyone would like to know how I fixed it --
From the Joomla Admin page > Extensions > Language Manager > Overrides > New
In the search field, type in "DATE_FORMAT" and in the drop-down menu select Constant. You will see some date format strings, compare them with the dates on your template and replace / reorder the letters to match the format you want. When done, click save & close.
Check out this table for reference as to what letters to use for what purpose.