Damaged piston?

That looks like something got into the cylinder and caused damage to the piston. What damage was done to the cylinder head? If you use a sharp item like a pick or even a fingernail, does it catch in the grooves on the cylinder walls? If yes, then you have a couple of options. One would be to rebuild the engine, or being this is a 1999 with a lot of miles you could likely find a used engine with lower miles and install it. Looking at the mileage and wear I would probably opt for the used engine. Especially with the current parts situation.
If you have a you-pull-it yard nearby you can usually get an engine for very reasonable cost. Even a regular yard sells them for under 500.00 normally. If you want to look around try www.car-part.com and enter in the info, be sure to note if your van is or is not flex fuel as the engines are different.

Yeah, I'm not sure what it is that got into it, I'm not a master mechanic obviously, I just don't have enough knowledge to make the decision of scraping the motor or continuing on with the head gasket job. I don't feel any grooves or ridges in the cylinder wall, it's self it feels like everything is just on the top of the piston and it did the same damage to the valves obviously. It just looked to me like the piston itself was a little bit deformed and broken and I did see a decent crack that goes across about 3/4 of the piston so I wanted to see what someone that had more knowledge than me would do. Times are tight right now unfortunately and this is the only vehicle right now and without much money to go out and try and get a new one I'm wondering if finishing the job will buy me 6 months maybe to try and get something else.

Any crack doesn't show up very well but that alone would cause me to scrap it. At the moment it is a rebuildable core, if it comes apart it becomes scrap. I wouldn't try to drive it myself simply because of the damage it has. I've seen pistons come apart and lock up the engine. Not a good thing if you are going 65 on a crowded road.

Yeah, I honestly knew that was the answer in the back of my head all along really. I was just hoping against hope that I could squeeze a little bit more life out of the old girl, but I guess it's headed to the graveyard. Can't really complain too much, bought it for $450 4 years ago and have been through a lot of stuff with it ever since plus roughly 100,000 miles on it at the low end.

Well, if you already have the parts, you could put it together and try it, but if not then I wouldn't put any money in it, I would hunt up a used engine and drop that in if the rest of the van is in decent shape.