Alright so I've looked at it an have consulted with several diffrent mechanics and I have determined that the metal chunk came off of the pinion gear, so all I'll have to do is disassemble the rear diff replace the pinion gear and it should be good as new. And looking into the prices so far it won't cost that as much $$s as your Chevy did. Sets that include all installation parts and whatnot (from what I'm seeing) are going for about 150-300 bucks
Unfortunately I do not have a local Jeep club

but I have heard of a guy here in town that's into modding his Jeeps into crawlers, so I'm hoping to contact him and ask if he might have a pinion gear.
Oh BTW I found out that ALL stock manual tranny TJ's made from 97-04, came off the factory line with a standard 4.11 gear ratio (for future reference if someone ever wants to do a JP TJ conversion)