pagination, navigation links, can they work on a custom loop?

OK, I am just banging my head against a wall here.
I have my homepage set to a custom page.

And on that page I have a custom loop that excludes a few categories.

I want to get pagination working specifically on this custom loop, which is called using:
<?php query_posts($query_string . ‘&cat=-4,-5,-3&posts_per_page=10’); ?>

Now if i scroll to to myhomepage.com/page/1 and myhomepage.com/page/2 it works fine and loads the right posts. But I can’t figure out how to get the navigation links to work right. I need the navigation links to display an “older posts” link if there are older posts and a newer posts link if there are newer posts, etc.

I have searched up and down google and the forums and haven’t been able to find a solution that works. seems like a simple issue, just getting pagination to work.

If anyone can please help, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks.