Why does my loaded jpg disappear from movie?

I am working on my first flash site and I am trying to do the following:

after intro movie is done playing I want the home page to come up on the page. The home page will be made up of a jpeg that is externally loaded by swf. The jpeg is revealed by a mask that tweens across.

I can get the jpeg loaded and I can get the mask to work but once the mask is done the picture just disappears from the movie and all I see is background color. Any ideas? I’ve included .fla file path below:

Actual site: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/gyanez/flash_test/index.html

Source: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/gyanez/flash_test/source/

Also my jpeg is 300K large and makes the loading of it cumbersome for dialup peeps. Any idea how I can keep the size small but still keep my 775 wide x 475 higher image?