I can't get the voicemail indicator to show up even when i have voicemails waiting. is there any way to turn this on and off on the hardware?

This is something that should be happening automatically, and I don't think there's a way to enable/disable this feature. Take your battery out for a couple minutes and put it back in and see if that helps. If it doesn't, you might call Verizon and ask them to reset your voicemail box, then do a battery pull again.

BTW it will only indicate NEW voicemail messages, not existing ones in your account. You probably already know that, but a lot of people come in here without even a basic understanding of how cell phones work, so I don't want to make any assumptions.

Welcome and good luck.